{"id":8383,"date":"2026-05-20T20:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T20:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/entrepreneurship-and-innovation\/?page_id=8383"},"modified":"2026-05-26T19:00:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T19:00:29","slug":"musizi-univieristy-of-uganda","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/entrepreneurship-and-innovation\/musizi-univieristy-of-uganda\/","title":{"rendered":"From Macalester to Launching a University in Uganda"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\tSheila Nabanja ’06 remembers Macalester’s idea to action mission and is acting on it today. <\/span>\n\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\tOne educational institution is driving change for more Africans to join the global workforce.<\/span>\n\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\tUganda has a real problem.<\/span>\n\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\tUganda is young and has a unmet demand for entrepreneurial, tech driven skills.<\/span>\n\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\tMusizi is the solution.<\/span>\n\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\tSheila Nabanja ’06 is a true change maker. The Team at Misizi understands this will be big!<\/span>\n\t\t\t
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From Macalester to Launching a University in Uganda: Where Vision Meets Execution<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
By Sheila Nabanja ’06<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a night I still think about from my time at Mac – one of those late conversations that started casually and somehow turned into something much bigger. We were sitting on the floor of a dorm room, talking about the world we were inheriting and the one we wanted to build.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around that same time, in a classroom, one of my professors had asked a question that quietly reshaped how I saw everything: Who benefits from the systems we take for granted – and who is left out?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t connect those moments right away. But over time, they converged into a realization I couldn\u2019t ignore: access to this kind of education – the space to think critically, to question assumptions, to imagine building something new – is not evenly distributed. And with that realization came a deeper question: What responsibility comes with being in rooms like this?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Macalester had a way of doing that – taking ideas that felt abstract and making them personal, urgent, and ultimately, actionable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That mindset has shaped the arc of my career and now, one of the most ambitious efforts I\u2019ve been part of – helping to launch Musizi University<\/a>, a new African-centered liberal arts university in Uganda, alongside co-founders Elaine Alowo Matovu<\/a>, who built and scaled a 700+ student K\u201312 institution, and Takako Mino, PhD<\/a>, who brings experience from Ashesi University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uganda is one of the youngest countries in the world, with a median age of ~14. The talent and ambition of its young people are unmistakable. And yet, like many systems globally, higher education remains largely oriented around rote learning – producing graduates who have worked hard, but are often underprepared for the demands of a rapidly changing, technology-driven economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not a talent problem. It is a systems design problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musizi is being built as a different kind of response – one that will feel familiar to anyone shaped by a Macalester education, but reimagined for a new context. Ethics is embedded into every course. Students don\u2019t just study entrepreneurship – they build ventures, test ideas, and engage directly with real-world challenges. Learning is interdisciplinary, applied, and grounded in African contexts and opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways, Musizi is a startup – an institution being built from first principles. But unlike a traditional startup, the returns we are optimizing for are generational and exponential: each graduate becomes a multiplier – often the first in their families to go to college – creating jobs, strengthening communities, and unlocking opportunity for many others over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From an entrepreneurship lens, this is ultimately a question of leverage. Early investment in human capital – particularly in contexts where the upside is constrained not by ability, but by access – has compounding effects. Education leads to higher lifetime earnings, which in turn drives job creation, improved health outcomes, and broader economic mobility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is the kind of problem Mac prepares you to take on – not because it is easy, but because it matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Musizi prepares to welcome its founding class, we are building a small group of early partners – individuals and institutions who understand what it means to shape something at its inception. For those within the Mac community who might be interested, there is a unique opportunity to help build a model of higher education that could inform not just Africa\u2019s future, but the future of higher education more broadly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the question is not only what we build, but who gets to be part of building it.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Macalester to Launching a University in Uganda: Where Vision Meets Execution By Sheila Nabanja ’06 There\u2019s a night I still think about from my time at Mac – one of those late conversations that started casually and somehow turned into something much bigger. We were sitting on the floor of a dorm room, talking […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":893,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8383","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/entrepreneurship-and-innovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/entrepreneurship-and-innovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/entrepreneurship-and-innovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/entrepreneurship-and-innovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/entrepreneurship-and-innovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8383"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/entrepreneurship-and-innovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8419,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/entrepreneurship-and-innovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8383\/revisions\/8419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/entrepreneurship-and-innovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}